NEWS ANALYSIS

  It is now more than a month since President Yoweri Museveni shut down Makerere University. This was because lecturers had abandoned teaching and issued government an ultimatum: pay our unpaid arrears or we will not return to work. However, the lecturers are not striking over salaries, because these have …

New Delhi, India | AFP | “To me, she was a goddess,” said party worker Shankar as he joined a sea of mourners bidding farewell to Jayalalithaa Jayaram, highlighting the messianic devotion of India’s poor for often controversial champions. Hundreds of thousands of people attended Tuesday’s funeral in Chennai for …

Questions asked about business, politics, religious rivalry The murder of Maj. Sheikh Mohammed Kiggundu, 52, a renowned Muslim cleric, who had denounced rebel activity and joined the army, has re-awakened fear of targeted killings. The husband of four and father of 12 was shot dead together with his escort, Sgt. …

Kampala, Uganda | AFP |  One of Africa’s longest-surviving rebel groups, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has terrorised parts of central Africa for 30 years. Its leaders are violent pariahs and fugitives from international justice, hunted by US special forces and African armies. Founder Joseph Kony remains on the loose, …

Kampala, Uganda | AFP | Abducted by gunmen as a 10-year-old boy on his way to school, Dominic Ongwen rose to become one of the most feared commanders in Uganda’s brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The former child soldier, now in his early 40s, goes on trial before the International …

Banjul, Gambia | AFP | President Yahya Jammeh scored only half his previous box office tally in last week’s election, handing victory to opposition coalition leader Adama Barrow. But why did Gambians turn against Jammeh after 22 years in power? Economic crisis A triple blow has been dealt to the …

  Accra, Ghana | AFP | Ghana’s New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidate Nana Akufo-Addo is hoping it’ll be third time lucky when the country votes for a new president on December 7. Akufo-Addo, an erudite rights lawyer and former government minister with round tortoiseshell glasses, narrowly lost the 2008 and …

Seoul, South Korea | AFP |  When South Korea’s Park Geun-Hye looks back on the scandal-fuelled implosion of her presidency, she may reflect ruefully on what lit the first fuse — a parent pulling strings over a child’s education. Park’s downfall was the result of her friendship with Choi Soon-Sil …

Experts tell Museveni, Mutebile, Muhakanizi President Yoweri Museveni’s unchecked spending and the Ministry of Finance and Bank of Uganda efforts to clean have created a lope-sided economy that is hurting everyone. That is the view of several economists interviewed by The Independent. Dr. Lawrence Bategeka, formerly a researcher at the …

Victim or villain as 100 are killed in Kasese massacre? On Nov. 14, two police officers on guard at Queen Elizabeth National Park in Kasese district were attacked and killed by unknown assailants who grabbed their two guns and disappeared. This was just two days after Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga …